I know work for two mental health counselors. I am paid as a contractor where I have to pay my own taxes. I work from home. Their phone rings into my office here at the house and I am expected to be available Mon-Fri, 9am to 5pm. I do intake, insurance eligibility and benefits, authorizations, filing and follow up on claims.

I want to change the dynamic of my employer/employee relationship. From where they pay me and set the agenda to where I charge for my services and set my own hours. I want to be able to take on more mental health counselors to do the intake and billing to make more money. I want more freedom over when I work with the ability to travel more.

I am investigating the benefits of using XXXXX to replace XXXXX (Names of software removed by moderator) as my database and to be able to work on the road.

My question involves how to price my time. Currently they are paying me what works out to be $12.69 an hour when I take out what I pay in self employment taxes.

With mental health billing I believe it is my best interest to charge by the hour. Since Counselors can only see one client an hour, I am not sure I can make enough if charging, say, 7% of collectibles.

I'm not quite sure what services you will continue to provide. I would think that being available to answer the phones from 9-5 would make it hard to be more flexible. Anyway, personally I (not being available to answer phones from 9-5) would estimate how many hours per wk/month an account would take me and then charge a flat fee. I don't like to give an hourly rate. They usually think "I could pay someone $10 an hour to do that in my office!" They forget about state and federal taxes, unemployment, Workers' comp, etc.

Thank you so much for your response. The reason I want to change the paradigm is so I am free to take on other billing clients.

One of the reasons I was thinking an hourly fee is because of answering the phones and handling the intake and benefits. I communicate their office particulars and the benefits, and send the new client paperwork to the new clients. I also handle quite a bit of their scheduling, credentialing and ongoing client authorizations. I want to work the phones less and concentrate on the billing. I will be available to work on the phone but I want to do less of it. My goal being to do only billing eventually.

If I figure 7% of what they bring in a month the figure is just shy of $600. So If I charge $600 or $700 for the billing alone and add my phone coverage on top of that as an hourly figure, maybe I can offer my services for fewer hours in a week.